


Yet Another Man's Goodbye

by distractionpie



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Other, Yet Another Man's Battlefield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25769392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: Coming home is supposed to mean no more loss. Maes did not come this far to give his best friend up.
Relationships: Gracia Hughes/Maes Hughes, Maes Hughes & Roy Mustang
Kudos: 19





	Yet Another Man's Goodbye

Having Gracia in his arms again feels nothing like a dream.

Hundreds of nights Maes has envisioned this moment, but there’s always been something decisively not real about it, some tip off that even when he gave himself fully over to his subconsciousness the visions of loveliness provided were not real. And it had been a blessing, because all too often he couldn’t sleep deeply or easily, spending nights hovering in a drowse knowing that he needed his rest but always alert for the next crack of gunfire or hollered order, and even a moment of uncertainty, the slightest blurring of the lines between dreams of Gracia and the realities of Ishbal, would have been a nightmare he’s not sure he could recover from.

But there is no question now. Gracia is not an ephemeral fantasy of the future Maes longs for or a flat photograph reminding him of what he’s fighting for, she’s in his arms, sweet and solid, smelling of a perfume that’s different from the one she wore before he went away but just as vibrantly floral, her hair soft against his face.

He pulls back to look at her, taking in all the slight ways her features have changed, a faint scattering of freckles that have bloomed on her cheeks since the winter of their parting, the way she’s trimmed her hair shorter so that it curls around her jaw, and dressed up in pale blue and white with a bright yellow bow that comes together to remind him of a summer sky, nothing like the desert bleached garments of the Ishavallans nor the crowd of stiff, dark military blues he’s grown so used to.

And she looks at him like she’s seeing the man he used to be, the Maes Hughes who wanted to defending his home and was building a career knowing there were bad seeds in the military but thought hard work and brains were all it would take to rise above those, not the shattered soldier who is just as tainted by the blight of war as the rest of them.

Good.

This is what he wanted. He’s going to push the war down and be the man that she deserves, give her the life that he’s been fighting for, and that begins today.

There’s so much to say, she’s kept him appraised of her life in his letters but she’s so much more that could be summed up even in a whole novel’s worth of pages, but there’s one thing that he knows she wants from him, has teased him about piquing her curiosity in their correspondence, and so Maes steps back, sweeping his arm around with a proud grin because he suspects this introduction has been long awaited on both sides, no matter what eye-rolls his habit of reading his mail aloud bight have earned. 

“Gracia, meet—”

Roy.

Who is not there.

Letting his hand drop from gesturing at where he’d been sure Roy was waiting, Maes glances up and down the platform, momentarily wondering if the moments where his world was nothing but Gracia’s embrace could have caused such disorientation. It’s hard to pick any one man out of the chaotic sea of uniforms -- though those having reunions are standing still, many of the men who’d made their way to Central have further to go, now amassing on other platforms to wait for onward bound trains north and west; and for a moment Maes wondering if Roy is among them but he hadn’t said a word about needing to rush for a connection, and he’s a Central boy, through and through, the thought of separate destinations is inconceivable-- and though Maes has never had trouble before pinpointing his friend among his fellow soldiers, now Roy is nowhere sight.

For a moment there’s a tightness in his chest, and when he looks around it feels just like it had in his first days on the battlefield, when he’d still thought clutching his comrades close might let him protect them. It was a habit he’d long since dropped, out in the desert those who spread their attention too thin invariably failed to look out for themselves and ended up dead – if anybody ever asked Maes say that he could let his men out of his sight because he took it on faith they’d return, nobody needs to know how fast he’d realised that the battlefield was a selfish place, nor that there’d been nothing to do but accept that even when he could watch over them, all he’d been was a helpless witness to their deaths.

But he’s home now, where there should be no special alchemist deployments sweeping Roy away to locations unknown for days or weeks at a time or sudden attacks to scatter them. His grip on Gracia steadies him, but Roy ought to be close at hand.

“Maes?”

“Sorry,” he says, looking back down at Gracia. There’s concern in her eyes and he forces the arm around her to relax. He’d promised never to put his burdens on her, and here he is, not five minutes back... “It’s... Roy. I promised I’d introduce you, remember?”

“Of course, but there’s no hurry,” Gracia says.

Maes shakes his head. “He was right here,” he explains. “A moment ago, we were talking.”

They’re not discharged, just on extended leave pending peacetime reassignments, which means the military will have some way of contacting Roy, but Maes doesn’t, he’d been counting on Gracia supplying his own contact details in the city, so then he and Roy could exchange them.

“Well, he must have his own people to meet,” Gracia reassures. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to be rude by rushing off, but your train was delayed. Perhaps he had plans in the city that couldn’t wait.”

Her attempt at comfort is sweet, her hopefulness is one of the many things he loves about her, but what plans could Roy possibly have that are so urgent he couldn’t say hello to Gracia, or at least goodbye to Maes?

If he had some important, urgent thing to do upon returning to Central, surely he would have told Maes. But Roy hadn’t said… well Roy hadn’t said much of anything, he’d seemed content to listen to Maes’ anticipatory gushing—about how Gracia would meet him at the train station, how her friend had helped him arrange an apartment because Gracia lived with her parents and Maes got along with his future in-laws but not that well, how he needed recommendations for a restaurant to celebrate at (because as much as he missed Gracia’s cooking, being taken out was the least reward she deserved for waiting for him)—but he’d shared no plans for his own future.

For a moment he’s struck by a memory of one of the few times since training he’d seen Roy with a gun in hand, remembers the list signs he’d been told to watch for in the men under his command, and feels a lurching dread that Roy might be planning for no future, but he shoves it aside. Roy wouldn’t. The war is over. Things are supposed to get better from here. In Ishval that might have been the only way to make the horrors stop, but now the way is for Roy to climb the ranks like they’ve talked about and make sure nothing like Ishval can happen again. Roy wouldn’t throw that away.

But he’d also never thought Roy would walk away without so much as a goodbye.

“Big plans, that would be just like Roy,” Maes admits. It’s the lack of communication that bothers him – anything important enough for him to rush off like that ought to be important enough to share.

“You’re worried,” Gracia says, her own brow creasing in empathy. “I’m sure he didn’t intend to not give you any way of getting in touch. Could you get his new address from military files?”

Possibly, when or if he registers one. At the moment so many soldiers are staying in hotels or boarding houses that it would take a whole army of secretaries to keep the paperwork up to date. 

“You’re right. I’m sure I can catch up with Roy later,” Maes says. This instinct to need to know his location and status is a battlefield mentality and he’s supposed to be leaving that behind and never showing it to Gracia. “It’s nothing to fuss about.”

“Of course, if he was with you just a few moments ago, he can’t have gotten far,” Gracia adds. “Why don’t we see if we can catch up with him now, and you can make certain he knows your new telephone number?”

It’s not the reunion Maes wants to give her. She shouldn’t have to accommodate his anxieties, but, angel that she is, Gracia is offering, and a real goodbye, alongside plans to meet later, might be just what he needs from Roy to remind him that they’re home.

They’ll get this mistake sorted out. Because a mistake has to be all Roy’s absence is. Maes just needs to remind him that it’s rude to disappoint a lady.

**Author's Note:**

> bc i got to the end and was like woah woah woah, where's the rest? Roy can't just walk off without a word like that. If nothing else it's _rude_.  
> Though I tried to keep writing a whole scene of them catching him up and talking but Roy wouldn't cooperate with that, so fair play to the episode writer(s) for accurate vibes.


End file.
